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Get Your Feet Wet Here

I’m Joe Garma, and, yes, those are my feet up there… the bottom ones.

I do two things on this site, more or less.

First, I curate and present you the best information about living a long, strong and vital life. There’s actually a bit of science behind it. And there’s a lot you can do actually get stronger and more youthful as you age.

The second thing I do here is to walk my talk. I experiment on myself, particularly if a certain protocol addresses some of my own issues, which I present below in all their glory.

I’ve been at this for over 30 years. I’ve done plenty of weight lifting, fasting, detox cleansing, meditation, yoga, bicycling, and deeply experimenting with antioxidant and immune system enhancing supplements. All this has not made me some supreme example of fitness, youthfulness or bulletproof health.

But I’ll tell you this…

I don’t get sick. I’m strong, flexible, fairly lean and energetic.

For a fella born in 1956, I’m doing great! And so can you.

This site is for people who are willing to learn how to live with more vitality and strength, and then put it into practice.

Male or female, young or old, healthy or infirmed… it doesn’t matter.

What does matter is that you’re willing to learn and act upon that knowledge.

If this describes you, here’s what to do now. Read the rest of this page, and go hop around the site gathering the knowledge most attractive to you. For instance, there might be a certain topic of interest, a list of which can be found in the sidebar of the blog under “Categories”.

But before you go, do get your name on the list for “The Method “and the Newsletter.

The Age-proof Method will be free to you. It’s under development and will be a crash course about living a long, strong and vital life. In my view this comes down to four basic areas, what I call the “4 Pillars’, which are:

Mindset, Reset, Fuel and Move.

There’s a brief overview of “The Method” below. Get on the list, and I’ll send it to you once it’s finished.

Remember without a doubt you can…

Get better. Not older.

What to Expect At GarmaOnHealth

In the past, I’d typically write one extensive blog post each week. Frankly, they could rather long and dense, but packed with doable insights for you.

I’m not going to abandon the long posts, but will be experimenting with writing more frequent short intros and summaries to insightful information I come across that deepens our understanding of how to become more youthful, more vital, mobile and stronger as the years tick by.

As a Subscriber (which is FREE), you will receive:

• One email per week of blog post summaries
• An occasional email blast about something noteworthy, such as some deep discount I can arrange for supplements, equipment or programs.
• And, of course, once it’s ready, The Age-proof Method.

Joe’s Health Challenges

While it’s true that I’m fairly strong, flexible and energetic, it hasn’t all been a cakewalk.

Yes, this part is about me, but I hope you can relate to some of it…

I’ve had to overcome many challenges, among them:

• A broken leg when my horse did a somersault while at full gallop with me astride in my 12th year.
• A dislocated jaw that a black belt laid on me during a sparring session in my 15th year.
• Two herniated disks in my lower back, a basketball injury that plagued me throughout my 20s.
• A severed Achilles tendon at age 36; again, courtesy of a basketball game.

(Click for more drama)

• A cracked pelvis at age 48 thanks to taking a sharp, steep curve too swiftly on my bike and slamming into the metal crash barrier along the road.
• One year later to the day at age 49, a hip-joint contusion when my front bike tire got stuck in a crack and I went straight down fast.
• Two years later, age 51, when to focused on catching up to a friend ahead of me, my bike’s handlebar smacked against a bike path vertical metal divider and I launched into the air landing, including the inevitable landing which presented me a hairline fracture in my ulna (one of two forearm bones) and adhesive encapsulates for my shoulder (aka, “frozen shoulder”). The strangest thing is that I still enjoy bike riding.
• Then around the 55-year mark, I sprained both my wrists while moving around big heavy rocks on my mother’s rural property. (Try doing any upper body exercise with wrists the bend little and cannot support much weight.)
• Finally – and I’m happy to end this hypochondriac rant — tendonitis in an Achilles tendon and forearm that would to flare up with exercise-robbing consistency.

Note that none of the above mentioned challenges had anything to do with the slow degenerative states that a life of poor eating, or a lack of exercise or sleep could create, not that I’ve got a free pass for that, as I’ll next describe.

But the important takeaway for you is that none of that long litany of things listed above affect me now, because I applied nutrition, mobility exercises, meditation, yoga and simple good old positive thinking to heal myself.

That said, there’s more to do…

These are the challenges now on my table:

• Fasting blood glucose is too high, very strange given my excellent diet. (Here’s the story.)
• C-reactive protein number – a measure of systemic inflammation – is too high, again odd because my diet if filled with anti-inflammatory foods. (More here.)
• Thyroid marker (TSH) indicates hypothyroidism (low thyroid production), a common but typically undiagnosed hormonal issue. (The story here.)
• Testosterone is too low, again very common in men past 40 years of age. (Surprise, surprise.)

Unless you’re an injury-prone athletic type like me, it will be the age-related, chronic degenerative health issues that you’ll need to avoid.

Your Resources

There’s a whole bucket of resources that have helped me keep fit and hale that are worthy of your consideration, some free, some not.

Of course, you could always go it alone. With enough study, discipline, and experimentation – you may eventually achieve your goals. Or you could get the leg up from someone who has cleaved a clear path to your desired destination.

The Age-proof Method

I’ve always been fascinated by the aging process, and have long felt that most of us degenerate too quickly.

This is not particularly insightful. Just look around.

Too many of us are bent over, stiff, slow, fat, tired and wrinkly before we need to be.

Although they’re in the tiny minority, once in a while you’ll spot someone who you expect may be a lot older than you but appears younger. There’s more glide in their stride. Their eyes are clear, the posture balanced and erect. Lean, mean fighting machine, sorta speak.

Could simply be genetics. Or maybe it’s epigenetics – by dint of their good habits, their “good” genes have been expressed in their phenotype (body), and the “bad” ones have been neutered.

What I’m getting at is this: To keep up (or regain) the attributes of youthfulness requires cultivating the habits that stress:

Hormone optimization – without your sex hormones (testosterone/estrogen), thyroid, insulin and leptin working effectively, anything you try to do – like losing fat, for instance – is like swimming against a strong tide.

Mindfulness – It all starts with the grey matter. To reinvent yourself, even a bit, requires that you’re mindful of what needs changing and of how new habits are formed and exercised.

Detoxification – A child born today in America starts life out with more than 200 chemicals in his/her body. How many years have you had to accumulate your boat load? High toxic loads like this disrupt proper hormone function and can wear you down. There are ways of expunging these toxins.

Homeostasis Disruption – Our bodies are clever. Reduce your calories to lose weight and soon your body will cut its basal metabolic rate, which means you’ll begin to burn fewer calories to meet the fewer you’re ingesting. This is an example of “homeostasis”, and it needs to be disrupted.

Mitochondrial Health – One of the primary theories of aging states that compromised mitochondrial DNA is a cause of aging and that maintaining mitochondrial health is central for longevity. (Here are 19 other theories about why we age.)

Functional Fitness – Yes, it’s great if you can bench press 300 pounds or run a marathon, but guess what… neither will keep you from getting old and frail before your time. What will is…

• Being able to sit down and stand up from the floor unaided by another, leaning on furniture, or using your hands or elbows;
• Having flexible spine;
• Possessing full articulation in all of your joints
• Alignment
• Having a resting heart rate of 60 beats per minute, or lower
• Being able to pull (pull-up) and push (push-up) your body weight

These among other things leads me to The Age-proof Method, which I’m now researching, writing and “filming” (videotaping really). I will give it to those on the email List FREE of charge. (More about that here.)

Based on the four pillars of “Mindset”, “Reset”, “Fuel” and “Move”, The Method will show you what to do to live a youthful, long, strong life brimming with vitality.

It might just transform your life.

Get on the List by typing your email in the form below, and then click that fat purple button/bar. Purple is a royal color.